...Can you smell it?

The peppermint that is???? lol, me neither, because this is a jar of Cherry rock. Not being in US it's kinda hard to find decent peppermint candy here, or at least I haven't managed to do so yet, but I live in hope.

Anyhow this cherry rock comes in rather uninspiring little baggies like this:

Now, surely, I thought to myself, I can do something with that. It's actually nice stuff (it's soft, which is a bonus for us folks approaching the delicate dental years) and it will make a dinky little prezzie for somebody that I'd like to acknowledge this Christmas, such as a classroom helper.

I decanted my cherry rock into a brand new Kilner Jar, being careful not to touch it on the way in. I know candy keeps for ages but I didn't want to run the risk of spoiling it and so I boiled out my jar first and then wore some of those wee clear sandwich making gloves to be sure it was all tickety boo. If you have ever had a child come home from Home-Economincs class with a 'team effort' fruit salad you'll be completely on my wavelength.

Kilner jars are perfectly suitable for customising thanks to the separate seal under the lid - you can see how I added a little card inset to the top of my jar in the pics below.

I stamped my main label in Riding hood Red ink (SU) onto some white card and then used a Spellbinders 2011 Heirloom Ornament die to trim it out. The main label comes from the Santa's coming to Town set that we released in October. No need for embossing or such, I just kept it plain and simple.

 For the lid insert I stamped the sentiment, also from the Santa's coming to Town set in Riding hood red. I wanted a purty frame and I chose a little spotty frame from the Vintage Circles Small stamp set and stamped it in a pale pink (Pink Pirouette - SU). I trimmed the circle out with a punch to be slightly larger than the opening in the screw on lid, so that it would stay in place when I tightened the lid.

I used two shades of green ribbon, pink and red flowers and a wee bit of fancy snowflake trim (Marks and Spencer Christmas ribbon) to finish it off, Hope it tickles!!!

Store News

I have decided not to have a release in December this year. I know we were scheduled to do one but between me and you, it gets a little busy this time of year and I rather thought it would be nice to have a relaxed build up to Christmas for us all. I hope to pop on the blog regularly and share packaging ideas etc and run a few good competitions.

Our next release will be in January, hopefully when we are all ready for a change of pace and a little freshening up, sound ok?

Competition

There are two main competitions I want to run between now and Christmas, and one involves making tags, they're quick, they're small and we're all going to need them, so look out for details on that in the next couple of days, I think you can safely assume that the theme will be Christmas...

The other competition I will be running is the Nice list comp - I LOVED this last year, and I'm itching to do it again this year, I'm thinking I will begin this on 1st December so watch out for that post also.

Right, back to packing for me, what are you up to this eveing?